Debridement
by auditoryeden
Summary: de·bride·ment [diˈbrēdmənt] (noun: medicine) The removal of damaged tissue or foreign objects from a wound. Part One of Reset and Recovery. Followed by Hopscotch.


It's all very well to go and get herself another job, away from Josh and CJ and everyone who loves her but keeps her pinned in place with the weight of their need and their affection. Donna's headed out with the Russell campaign as of tomorrow night, she's left her desk sitting empty this week, but it's all going to be for nothing if she can't get Josh out from under her skin.

She needs to scour him out, wash him off her mind. Work him out of her system, so to speak. What she needs is closure, the opportunity to explore the possibilities she's always imagined, or the heartbreaking but final discovery that she's been alone with her feelings all along. The elimination of doubt.

Donna's going to seduce him, and she's going to have to do it tonight.

Her breath is coming short and fast in the cab, and she can feel her eyes going wide as the driver pulls up along the curb outside his house. She barely feels the fare in her hands as she forks it over, and then she's standing on the sidewalk and facing the door.

His living room light is on.

Donna lets herself in with the key she's always had, first the building and then his apartment, and then Josh is coming out of the bedroom looking miserable and grey and when he sees her, his face hardens somehow, gets gaunter and more hollow-eyed than she's ever seen him.

"What are you doing here, Donna?" he asks her, sounding mostly tired and quiet, and maybe she should be glad he's giving her a chance to explain, but mostly she wishes he was yelling, getting steamed up and scrubbing his hands through his hair, because that's an animal she's already tamed.

"I came to talk to you," she says, and then, "No, that's...I quit my job."

"I noticed." The bitter recrimination in his voice is everything she expected and more, worse, because alongside the resentment, he sounds lost. "Any reason you didn't feel the need to, I don't know, give me a little warning?"

"I tried. Maybe not hard enough, but I did." She lets that hang for a while, lets him remember all the times he bailed on her and lets him wonder how long she's been trying. On some level, she wants to hurt him. Wants to look him in the eye and say nasty things to him and break his heart because she's feeling too many things. It's the same kind of feeling that made her lash out at Kate, but so, so much bigger. "But that's not why I'm here."

"Share with the class?"

Donna takes a deep breath, nods.

Any way you slice it, she's going to clean out the wound.

"Donna..." His tone is dangerous now, actually dangerous, the kind of rough, wild anger that led him to scream at the President and put his hand through a window.

"I need to get over you," she says, directly to his face, looking him in the eye. She has to swallow to keep her stomach down. "I've been holding myself back for years because I wanted to be with you. I need to...I need you to sleep with me."

This may not seem like Seduction 101, but if there's anything Donna's learned about Josh and dating, it's that the best approach is a 2x4 to the temple.

First he looks appropriately brained, eyes blown wide with shock and mouth hanging temptingly ajar. Then he gets just a little brightness in his eyes, the barest hint of a dawning smile, but before he can give her that devastating grin, the one that would probably break her will and make her cry, storm clouds gather, the brooding fury she knows so well. "You came here in the middle of the night, to tell me I have to have sex with you so you can just—turn around and walk out of my life?" he demands, low and growly in a way that makes her bones itch.

Angry hate-sex, then, she thinks, dizzy. "I came here to ask you to have sex with me," she corrects him, gently, but it doesn't help.

"So, what, you think one pity fuck is going to work this whole mess out of your system?" He wheels and strides across the room, getting into the pacing groove he likes to argue from. The sight stirs Donna's heart a little, so painfully familiar. This is how he gets when he's gearing up to fight Republicans, her favorite turn on.

It's only a little less hot now he's gearing up to fight her. "I don't know," she admits, "But nothing else's worked, so this is all that's left."

"Nothing else." He's scrubbing his hands through his hair, shooting her dirty looks.

"I've tried to ignore it. You know I've been with other men," she explains, and he snorts. "Well, I don't know, gomers like the ones you're always parading around—"

"Joshua, shut up and fuck me."

The words are awkward in her mouth, and she feels not a little dirty and awful for saying it, but that's probably for the best. She's vaunted sex with Josh, even kissing Josh, in her mind for so long, there's no way this night is every going to live up, be anything but disappointing, and the more ways she can make this a night to regret, the better able she'll be to put it out of her mind and move past it. Move past him.

His eyes are flat black in the poor lighting and his jaw is visibly, furiously clenched. He's not pacing anymore and she wishes he would move again, because she feels stuck, trapped in his motionlessness.

And then he's striding across the room, slamming her against the door, and hissing in her ear, " _Fine."_

He hasn't quite hurt her, but she's winded, the shock of it bringing tears into her eyes, and a small, pathetic whimper escapes her. Just like that his hands are hovering away from her, his eyes are watching her with panic in their depths, and she can see the guilt and self-recrimination starting to build.

So she reaches up and pulls him down and seals her mouth against his like she has wanted to for nigh on eight years.

At first nothing happens. It's like her body doesn't even register that she's touching him, since touching Josh has always been an event her skin has celebrated enthusiastically under any circumstances, yet she feels nothing except for the warmth of his lips and the vague heat of his body six inches from her own.

It's as though he's not feeling her, either, until his hands light on her shoulders, and her skin catches fire with a bone-deep shudder up her spine.

Kissing Josh is not mediocre at all, not that Donna had seriously believed it could be. He's such a failure at women that he had to have some serious chops to keep dynamos like Mandy and Amy panting after him, but it had been so convenient to tell herself that he was a nerd and therefor probably not very good at kissing, to keep herself in check all those years. Not quite bromide in her drinking water, but enough to keep her from _getting out of hand_.

In reality, he's warm and the smell of him in her nose and the knowledge that _this is Joshua_ would probably be enough to get her hot even if he wasn't actively making her toes curl, but he is, and she's had some seriously skilled lovers in the past, but something about the fact of him is making them all pale in comparison.

His mouth leaves hers long enough to kiss its way to her jaw and the exquisitely sensitive place just below her ear. It's an easy spot to find, one Donna's always been grateful for, because in her experience men are more likely to be generous lovers if they don't have to work too hard for it, but Josh seems to know where it will be before he gets there. The very tip of his tongue darts out to taste the skin, and she can already feel the ache between her hips building, deepening, can feel herself lubricating in anticipation. " _Shit_ , Josh," she pants against his ear, and he scrapes his teeth over her neck, just hard enough to hurt a little.

The noise she makes is objectively embarrassing, but neither of them is lucid enough to notice.

He's taking her apart with ruthless efficiency, she realizes, breaking her down and turning her into a needy mess, and she's barely even touched him.

That's a problem she's more than happy to fix.

His sweater is soft and deceptively thin under her fingertips, but she knows how warm it is because she's stolen it once or twice. It outlines his body cooperatively as she strokes over his chest, his stomach, back up to his shoulders, and she's always objectively known that he had a physique, but that's nothing to feeling the swell of his pectorals through a sheet of cashmere.

Her hand grazes his side, and he grunts, pulls away from her neck for a second, and Donna grins at him. She has, after all, just discovered that Josh Lyman is ticklish.

"Shut up," he tells her, deadly serious, and then he's pressing her against the wall again, kissing her mouth again, and his fingers are wriggling into her waistband, popping the button and the fly of her trousers, and slipping straight into her folds, into her center.

Her brain spins out into space even as her knees weaken.

It's like he thinks he has something to prove, because he's fingering her, he's tracing delicate shapes on her clit, he's kissing her better than anyone else in her life, but he's doing it with this horrible efficiency, like he has to be not only the best lover she's had but also the quickest. Maybe, a detached part of her brain surmises, while he's pushing knuckle-deep inside her again and she has to coil her arms around his neck to keep standing, he's trying to get it over with, satisfy her and send her on her way. It's exactly the kind of stupid, combative, self-destructive thing he does.

Maybe he's never wanted her like this.

However close she'd been to an orgasm before that thought, after it, she's left almost cold.

"Josh," she says, pulling back. "Josh, sto—ooh, God." He freezes obediently, his hand still down her pants, his fingers curled against some incredible spot deep inside her, and looks at her with a look of mixed trepidation and determination.

Donna tugs on his arm, and he does as instructed, withdrawing from her sex and her pants, leaving her gasping and aching and empty. His fingers are slick and shining and he lets them fall to the side, doesn't wipe them on his jeans or lick them off or hold them up to her mouth.

She has to take another deep breath.

This is not how she's going to do this, how they're going to do this, she decides. They're going to do this right, not just a quickie against the door of his apartment, or they're not going to do it at all.

Suddenly all Donna wants is for Josh to hold her, for them to backtrack and forget that she'd literally ordered him to _fuck_ her, to go back to the rare intimacy of just hugging.

His thumbs are stroking over her cheekbones before she realizes she's crying again.

"Donna," he breathes, and his forehead is resting against her hers. "Why'd you come here if you don't want this?"

"Do you?"

It's probably—no, definitely—not a fair question to be asking when she's the one who stormed into his home and started making demands. She's asking it anyway.

He closes his eyes, and she's always loved how Josh looks with his eyes closed, with them open, too, for that matter. Donna loves how he looks at pretty much all times, and hates herself for it. "I've wanted you since you walked into my office and hired yourself," he groans softly, and her head begins to feel like she's been filled with helium. "Me, too," she admits.

He's the one who starts it, now, and it's the first kiss she's always dreamed of, dizzy with quick-hearted excitement and almost a feeling of disbelief, Josh's big, warm hands cradling her face and his mouth tender and slow on hers.

Every part of him is warm, feels incredibly real under her hands. The stretch of skin between his collar and his curls is hot, actually a little damp with sweat, and she can feel the prickle of the short hair there. His shoulders are hunched forward, bunched with tension, his knee nudging gently between hers so Donna can feel him pressed against her from chest to calf.

She can feel the ridge in his jeans.

The thought of him, hard, dissolves her knees, drives a mewl from her throat, and he has to literally catch her with an arm around her waist as she buckles.

"You alright, there?" he asks, fondly amused, and Donna can't do more than lean into him, wind her arms around him, and let him hold her up.

This isn't their usual kind of hug. For one thing, their usual kind of hug doesn't typically have an erection trapped inside it, but it's more to do with the arms and the heads than it does the sexual tension and arousal. Normally she goes over and he goes under, and they go for a quick press, faces buried in shoulders, not leaving room for Jesus exactly but certainly no pelvic contact.

Now, though, they are so, _so close_ , and his heartbeat rings against her ribs. Donna's cheek is resting on his shoulder, head bowed and face turned away from his as she breathes herself through the light-headedness and the fluttering in her tummy. Josh leans his face against her hair, presses a soft kiss to the crown of her blonde head. "Come on," he tells her softly.

Gentle hands on her waist and elbow guide her through the living room, the kitchen with its ugly, outmoded table and chairs, into his bedroom.

It's bizarrely tidy.

Josh is not a person who reacts to stress by cleaning. When a bee crawls into his bonnet, he becomes, more so than usual, a leaver of things in his wake. Cleaning up after him had been one of Donna's major responsibilities, and a not-insignificant factor in her decision to quit.

Josh's room never looks like this unless he knows he's not going to be sleeping in it for a while.

She wonders if he's planning to sleep at the office until he can train her replacement, and feels a modicum of guilt.

"Take off your shirt."

His voice is almost hypnotic, a buttery tenor, soft and quiet, and she moves with heavy arms to obey as he drops to his knees, bringing her trousers down with him. When her blouse hits the floor, she's left in her underwear, a peachy set she'd once chosen specifically with him in mind, and Joshua Lyman is kneeling before her, hands cupping her hips, with a reverent look on his face.

"Holy shit," he pronounces, nearly silent, and presses a kiss to her belly that makes every inch of her skin stand on end.

"Josh!" Her voice is low and whining, and he comes as soon as she calls, rising up and pulling her hips flush against his as their faces grow close.

They are almost of a height, a scant two inches separating the tops of their heads in stocking feet, and it's a wonderful advantage to press so close, matched shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip.

They are breathing the same air, foreheads pressed close, savoring the feeling of lingering together, and Josh tells her, "Get on the bed. On your back."

She goes.

His duvet is soft under her knees, her palms, her back, as she crawls up to lay her head on the pillow on the left, and she muses that this isn't how she'd planned this. There wasn't supposed to be anymore following his orders, letting him boss her around, but—this is different. Or it feels different, anyway. This feels like...being taken care of.

Donna scoots back a little against the headboard to watch him, just in time to see him strip off undershirt and sweater in one smooth move, his stomach tightening above the waist of his jeans.

If asked, most inmates of Washington DC would probably bet money that Donna Moss had seen Josh Lyman with his shirt off. Most inmates of Washington DC would be out of their cash.

Even during the long, miserable period of his recovery, when Donna had pretty much lived in his spare room and looked after him for months, she hadn't ever seen him undressed, hadn't let herself. There had been a home nurse for a little while, after the hospital, and Sam had been in and out of the apartment all the time after that, helping Josh to change and wash himself until he had the strength to do it alone, with Donna listening at the door with hawk-like ears for any mention of stressful White House business. Once she'd helped him strip out of a pizza-stained t-shirt, but she'd been behind him, taking great care not to ogle the skin and muscle of his back.

The abs are nice. Lightly defined, not extreme, maybe a little softer than Josh would like, but definitely worth a long, appreciative look. Same for his chest, just the better side of perfectly respectable and nicely sexy. It's his shoulders that completely do her in.

Under those shirts in varying degrees of crispness and cleanliness, Josh's shoulders had always been a sloping line, full of tension from the weight of the world resting on them. Exposed, Donna can see the sharp relief of his collarbone, the way the muscle arcs from his neck down to the rounded curve of his arm, the sleek line of his bicep, down to the forearms she used to stare at, when he rolled up his sleeves. His shoulders are devastating.

He's gorgeous, gilded in the yellow light of his bedside lamp. Gilded and moving towards her, shuffling on his knees up to where she's got her feet tucked together, placing a hand on each shin and easing her legs apart.

Neither of them speaks as he slides his hands up her thighs, hooks his thumbs in the lace of her underwear, and draws them gently down and off, or as he arranges her legs how he wants them, spread just enough, bent slightly, with her feet on the bed.

Josh says nothing as he he bends to kiss her between those legs, and Donna is beyond words.

Heat prickles in her cheeks and breasts as he swipes from her entrance to her clit, a broad, flat stroke with his tongue, and her hips jolt up against his face. A hand braces against her stomach before he does it again, flicking the tip of his tongue into her before dragging it over her sex in a luxuriant lick. Her lungs feel collapsed, like she's caught in a vacuum and all the air's rushed out of her. Her vision starts to blur.

The pleasure Josh is giving her isn't acute, the kind of pointed, concentrated feeling she works herself up to in the shower, relentless and thorough and knee-shaking. It's more insidious, making the muscles in her legs, her arms, her shoulders tingle and twitch. Her stomach feels liquid, hot, but not tight. It's like she's immersed in hot water, and it's slowly starting to boil.

When he gently probes her entrance with the tip of a finger, she whines, and the tension suddenly coils in her belly, clenches, flutters.

As he slides two fingers in and up, searching for her g-spot, the tension breaks, and with an incoherent wail, she comes.

In the grand scheme of orgasms, it's not the hardest or the longest or the most satisfying she's ever had, but it is somehow the hottest, the most desperate. It feels...she can't begin to verbalize how it feels, the way every delicate flick of his tongue reverberates through her flesh, the itchy, coppery feeling of his fingers crooked inside her, the heat of his palm on her belly, suddenly overtaken by the static rush of a body aching for relief but instead finding only a small release. It doesn't last a thousand years, or even fifteen seconds, and when she comes back down she's sloppy wet, desperate for him, nearly in tears from the _hurt_ of her desire.

And he's watching her, crouched between her spread thighs, no longer touching, just watching, with slick-shiny lips and eyes like some big, dangerous cat.

Her arms tremble as she pushes herself up, and he reaches out to help her. The spread of his palms against her ribs feels impossibly wide, like he could hold the whole of her, safe in his fingers, and she lets him hold her weight completely as she twists her arms up her back and pops the clasp of her bra.

As she lays her hands on his shoulders, pulls herself up, overtop of his lap, he strokes the straps down her arms, pulls the lacy, unlined cups away from her breasts, and swallows. "Hold still," he rasps, and then he's extricating her arms, throwing the bra away, ducking his head to close his lips over one puffy, stiffened nipple.

The wet heat of his mouth only stokes the ache inside her, and she doesn't hold still. She writhes against him, tries to work her hand between their bodies, to open the button of his jeans. A ripping lightening-bolt of heat shoots through her as Josh bites down, not hard enough to really hurt, but enough to make his point.

"Josh," Donna gasps, nearly sobs. " _Please."_

He lets his mouth fall away from her breast, rests his forehead on her shoulder. "Donnatella," he breathes. Then he's kissing her throat, fumbling with the fastenings of his pants, and with her scrambling help, pushing them down his hips just enough to free his cock.

She doesn't give him time to worry about condoms or whether she's protected, doesn't even give him time to brace himself, before she seizes the length of him and sinks, so, so easily, onto him.

The very small part of her that's still capable of rational thought notices that he's wide, full, probably wouldn't have fit inside her so easily if she weren't already wrecked, desperate and dripping. It wonders how his fingers got so skilled. It wonders where Joshua Lyman first learned to pleasure a woman, how his very first lover had looked at his cock, what she'd said, how she'd felt. It hears the bone-deep groan he lets out, and savours the whole-body shudder.

The rest of her is too busy feeling the stretch inside of her, pressing her cheek to his, steadying herself on his strong, beautiful shoulders. A tilt of her hips draws him out, maybe an inch, and then she's grinding forward, taking him in deeper, wincing and gasping at the pleasure of it. His hands take her hips, and then he's guiding her, making tiny, nudging thrusts to match her slow, definite undulations.

Gradually, they build. There's no speaking, now, no moaning, nothing but their locked eyes and their panting breaths and the crescendo of their thrusting, grinding, aching bodies. All too soon, there's no faster, no harder they can move, and Josh grits his teeth, pushes Donna back til her shoulders touch the bed, and rises up on his knees, still holding her hips, keeping them joined.

She has less leverage like this, but he has far, far more, and the difference is sudden and transforming. Instead of tiny, frantic, shallow strokes, he gives her the deep, steady thrusts she needs, and when she groans and calls out his name, he redoubles his efforts, watching her with intense, hooded eyes, biting his lips. His arms and shoulders tense with every movement, and she watches them, watches the play of feelings—pleasure, adoration, concentration, lust—across his face.

This time her orgasm is a slower, more satisfying thing, and she arches her way into it with the gratifying impact of Josh inside her, clamping down around him and reveling in the length of him, the bite of his fingers on the flesh of her hips. This time she's not aware of anything, for long enough that she misses the contortion of his face as he groans and surrenders to his own climax, long enough that when the fuzz begins to clear he's curled overtop of her, supporting his weight on his elbows but otherwise supremely collapsed, still inside.

"Holy mother of God," he croaks, nuzzling against the side of her breast.

"You can say that again," she agrees. It's the natural thing, to bring her hand up and run her fingers through his soft, preposterously fluffy hair, carding from the base of his skull up to his hairline, stroking leisurely behind his ear. He nips lightly at her breast, kisses away the pain, and rolls off her with an almighty groan, immediately dedicating himself to removing the jeans and boxers bunched half-way down his thighs. Donna has to bite her tongue as he pulls out of her body, leaving her slick and stinging a little, feeling well-used.

There is a long and exquisite moment of glowing, exhausted satisfaction. Donna is beginning to wonder if maybe she's done what she's wanted to do ever since she got home from Germany, and found a way to restore them to the comfortable silence they'd once been able to share, so naturally, Josh ruins the moment.

"We didn't use a condom," he notes, flat voiced.

"No." Donna can feel the heat of him inside her still, savours it. "I didn't want to wait; I'm on the pill."

"Oh. Okay." Josh reaches out and trails a languorous hand down her side. "Good."

As she closes her eyes, he scoots up alongside her, wraps an arm around her waist, and she imagines, imagines vividly, that she can reach out with her mind and touch his, give him the words, "I love you," without committing them to the open air.

He tucks his forehead against her neck, and she drifts to the feeling of his lips pressing the gentlest of kisses to her shoulder, the repetitive, insistent circle of his thumb against her ribs.

* * *

Bright light is pouring in through inconsiderately uncurtained windows, the kind of sunlight that wakes you regardless of your wishes. Donna is warm and boneless feeling and relatively sure that her body could not possibly wring another orgasm out of itself if her survival depended on it, floating out of a gentle sleep. Josh's arms are around her, his long, naked body pressed up behind hers, and wakefullness starts to return as she realizes that she's made a terrible miscalculation.

There is no possible way this night has gotten him out of her system. She's still tingling and pleasantly numb all over and her body, though it has no interest in sex, wants nothing more than to lie skin to skin with him for quite possibly the rest of her life.

Sleeping with Josh hasn't cured her, it's ruined her.

And comfortable and sated as she is, she's supposed to be getting on a plane tonight. The thought of leaving this bed, leaving his arms, makes her want to cry. The thought of going back to the office and answering his goddamn phone one more time makes her want to scream.

As though sent by God to torment her, his phone rings.

Josh stirs reluctantly behind her, swears quietly, and she feels him roll away from her with mounting tension somewhere between anger and loss. "Josh Lyman," he answers, in a gravelly, loose, just-been-fucked kind of voice. Then, "Oh. Right. Yes. Yes. Three o clock, thank you. Yes. You, too."

"Meeting?" Donna asks, rolling over.

Her heart catches in her chest.

Josh has excellent features, lovely eyes, a strong nose, an excellent jaw and dimples, but it doesn't usually occur to her that he's beautiful. Maybe it's the crazy hair, the stubble on his cheeks, the fact that he looks thoroughly pleased and unusually well-rested, and that she's responsible for it—some kind of biological imperative. Her heart fills at the sight of him.

"Um. No, actually." He has the grace to look sheepish. "Airport."

Donna frowns. "There weren't any trips on the agenda..."

"No, you're right," he agrees, and now he looks...well…constipated. "It's just me. I'm flying to Houston at three."

"Houston." The doubt is clearly audible in her voice. He has neither family nor friends anywhere in Texas at all.

"I'm flying to Houston to run Matt Santos' campaign for President," he confesses, and Donna feels her stomach implode.

"Oh." The look he's giving her is so...evocative, so Josh. Chin a little tucked under, eyebrows raised in concern, mouth slightly open in a little pout. "My, um...my new job," Donna explains, feeling her face grow hot. "I'm going to be working for the Russell campaign."

She feels his judgment. She feels it, takes a moment to absorb it, marinate in it, and then she forces herself to move past it. "Bingo Bob," he says, flatly, giving her a look she can't really decipher.

"The Vice-President," Donna corrects. Josh purses his lips and raises a single sardonic eyebrow, and it should be dousing her affection for him but instead she just wants to cuddle up to him until she has to leave for the airport.

Or til he does.

"This is what I'm going to do, Josh," she insists, struggling not to slip into admonition. "I needed something bigger, I've never had responsibilities like this before. I can grow working for Russell, and I need to do that on my own."

"Away from me." He's frowning again, doing that thing with his jaw that makes her think he's chewing on his tongue.

Donna heaves a sigh. "Yes, Josh. Away from you in the professional sense."  
His eyes flicker up to her, a little shy and still a little reserved. "And in the personal sense?"

She can't hide the blush, the little involuntary smile. "Well, we're both going to be on the road a lot."

"Nashua's not that big," Josh observes, sounding blatantly hopeful. "Figure you could pencil me in?"

"I'll try," she promises, before she can think about it. "I don't think you're out of my system yet."

There are some jokes that are not, for reasons beyond the control of the teller, ever going to be funny to the tellee. It is not an understatement to say that Donna could hardly have chosen a worse crack to try and make.

Josh's face shuts down completely, and he gives her a sharp, short nod, before he rolls out of bed and pads off to the bathroom. For a moment she's frozen with shock and the instinct to watch his bare ass as he walks away, while her brain scrambles to figure out why he's just stormed out on her.

Then it clicks.

Yes, they've gotten their shit together and admitted their feelings, come to a place where Donna, at least, has resigned herself to the futility of ever wanting another man ever again, but she'd started last night with demands and the implication that all she wanted was one night of catharsis. She'd all but said that she was planning to leave for good, and after all, she'd literally walked out on him not even a week ago. If there's anything Josh can't handle, it's being left by the people he loves.

So yeah, of course a joke about getting over him would fly like a brick. After all the upheaval and uncertainty of yesterday, he probably feels like she's ripping the rug out from under him again. The realization leaves her breathless with instant, consuming guilt. Hadn't she been the one to tell Amy off for her failure to understand him?

Such is her haste as she flies out of bed, Donna doesn't quite manage to disentangle herself from the sheet and goes down with a blinding flash of misery onto the floor, knees first.

" _Fuck!_ "

"Donna?"

She groans in answer, flopping over onto her side on the cool wood floor and clutching her legs to her chest. One of them is rubbed raw from the sudden friction, and already she can feel bruises blooming under her alabaster skin. Her hands are stinging, too, and her arms and shoulders ache from the sudden shock of catching her own weight.

"Donna?" Josh calls again, and she opens her watering eyes to see him looming over her, still naked as a newborn and looking concerned.

"I'm alive," she croaks, unconvincingly.

Josh dimples obligingly. "I can see that."

"Help me, Joshua."

He's all solicitousness and charm as he pulls her to her feet and checks her over for more serious injury, but Donna can still feel the reserve in him, the facade. This is the Josh who flirts with the woman he can't have, not the man who made love to her three times before he let her sleep. This is what he felt like when she came back after Gaza, like he was trying so hard to seem like nothing had changed.

"I'm not leaving you again," Donna tells him, blunt. "I'm sorry for joking about it. I want to see you while we're campaigning."

"You said that last night," Josh says, eyes downcast, and his hands drop away from her arms. "The thing about getting me out of your system."

"It backfired," she admits.

Again he gives her the sardonic eyebrow. "You think?"

"I'm never gonna get you out of my system, Josh." Donna shakes her head, steps nearer to him, ignores the throbbing in her knees. "I told you; I love you."

"You-ah-" The constipated look is back in full force, like she's taken a bat to his head. "You...didn't say that."

"Yes I-"

"Donnatella," Josh interrupts, taking her by the shoulders. "I swear to you, if you'd ever said that to me before, I'd remember."

"Uh..." Her face catches fire as her brain catches up with her mouth. She's opening and closing it, about to spill forth some babble to cover for herself, when he speaks.

"I love you, Donna. I love you, too."

"Oh." Neither of them has an expression on their face, just watchful, considering eyes, and then Donna's resting her palms on his chest, lifting her lips to his.

After they break apart, they linger in each other's arms. "What time is it?" Donna asks, quietly.

"Nine-ish."

She swallows, counts quickly in her head. "So we have four hours."

"Yeah."

"Joshua?" she asks, beginning to stroke along the line of his collarbone.

"Yeah?" His voice is rougher again, just a little. Donna smiles.

"Bed."


End file.
